Bouncing
back from the embarrassment he caused himself last week by calling for
all the police in America to go on strike until the American people disarm
themselves, the mayor of New York City is now trying to ban baby formula.
According
to The Daily Mail Online, “Mayor Bloomberg has demanded that
hospitals stop handing out baby formula to persuade more new mothers to
breast feed their babies. The New York City health department will monitor
the number of formula bottles being given out and demand a medical reason
for each one.”

Only
in the mind of Michael Bloomberg do the words “demand” and
“persuade” go together.

This
oh-so-health-conscious mayor, who proudly marches in the “gay pride”
parade every year—can you say “unhealthy lifestyle choices”?—has
previously banned smoking, trans-fat, and large sodas, with unsuccessful
stabs at salt and caffeine. You can be certain he’ll come up with
yet another target—large portions of red meat, maybe. He’s
got enough time left on his term to ban a lot of things.

Does
this not raise questions, in your mind, about the individual’s relationship
to the state?

As Christians
we are constantly accused of trying “to impose a theocracy”
whenever we suggest any kind of change in public policy, or speak against
a change proposed by others. Apparently only foaming-at-the-mouth leftists,
feminists, and homosexual activists are allowed any input on such questions.

Meanwhile,
the mayor of New York can see no limit whatsoever to his authority. He
tells us what we can eat or can’t eat, starting, now, from the moment
we are born. It’s hard to imagine any “theocracy” quite
as rigorous as that. Maybe the Taliban would like to jump on the ban-the-baby-formula
bandwagon: but is it all that hard to imagine Bloomberg in a beard and
turban?

It seems
the only freedom he would leave us is unfettered fornication. He’s
still plenty cool with that. But don’t be fooled. He and his kind
let us enjoy this false freedom because it allows them to redefine marriage
and the family. They’re big on redefining basic human institutions.

Where
is it written that the purpose of a chief executive—Bloomberg is
the chief executive of a large city—is to enforce an individual
health regime for every citizen?

We all
do things that are not in our best health interests. I smoke a pipe or
a cigar because I like to. I don’t jog because I don’t like
to. I like White Castles for supper now and then. I don’t like goat’s
milk and veggie-burgers.

In the
Bloomberg universe, I can’t have a nice cigar, but I must send my
children to a public school where a “gender coach” comes into
the first-grade classroom and teaches the kids, “You can be a boy
one day and a girl the next, depending on how you feel.” I can’t
have my White Castles, but I must fill my house with those squiggly light
bulbs containing toxic mercury vapor. The idea is to wrest all choices
out of our hands, empowering the government to make them for us.

Who’s
crazier—Bloomberg, or the people who elected him to three terms?
Maybe the people of New York like a mayor who makes their choices for
him. Then again, maybe the candidates he beat were even worse.

Remember
that Time Magazine cover with the woman breast-feeding a four-year-old
boy? On Planet Bloomberg, the boy is a 40-year-old man and the mother
is the government.

Statism
condemns its citizens to perpetual infancy. Remember the Obama Campaign’s
video, “The Life of Julia”—the woman who boasts of her
dependence on the government for everything she’s ever done in her
life? Our leaders wish to turn us into a nation of toddlers.

Subscribe
to the NewsWithViews Daily News Alerts!

Enter
Your E-Mail Address:

Liberty
is for adults: a republic of infants will not stand. The most such citizens
can do is to rubber-stamp their rulers’ whims and fancies, for fear
that otherwise the nipple will be yanked from their mouths.

In truth,
there is no compelling medical reason to feed babies on formula instead
of breast milk. If the mother is incapable of nursing, find a substitute.
What do you think people did before baby formula was invented?

But
persuading people to breast-feed, and demanding that they do it, are two
different things—a subtle nuance utterly lost on the Bloombergs
of this fallen world.

Lee Duigon,
a contributing editor with the Chalcedon Foundation, is a former newspaper
reporter and editor, small businessman, teacher, and horror novelist.
He has been married to his wife, Patricia, for 34 years. See his new
fantasy/adventure novels, Bell Mountain and The Cellar Beneath the Cellar,
available on www.amazon.com